Two Commentaries from the Fourth International on the Revolt
of Arab and African Youth in France

1. Resist the Curfew

Statement
of November 8 by Olivier Besancenot for the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire
(LCR), French Section of the Fourth International

The decisions announced by Prime
Minister de Villepin yesterday evening on the TF1 [TV channel] are
unacceptable. Instead of responding to the social crisis, he is reviving a law
dating from the colonial era, the time of the Algerian war, giving local authorities
the power to decree a curfew in all or part of a local area and to suspend a
number of freedoms. Already, E. Raoult, mayor of Raincy—a town with 2.6% social
housing [i.e., the run-down housing projects where the acts of protest and
revolt by marginalized young people began]—acting as the pilot fish for the
sharks of repression, has taken the initiative and instituted such a measure in
his town.

Moreover, the LCR calls for
resistance to the curfew, by demonstrating in boroughs and local areas, at
night if necessary, wherever the curfew is imposed by local authorities.

The LCR calls on all left-wing and
democratic organizations to come together and build such demonstrations.

2. The Fire This Time

In Face of Widespread Revolt, French Government Has Nothing Better to Offer Than Repression

This
article is scheduled for posting on the web site of International Viewpoint,
publication of the United Secretariat
of the Fourth International, a worldwide organization of socialist and labor
activists. The article has been edited for Labor
Standard, and the headline has been changed.

The nightly riots in the poor
neighborhoods around France’s
towns and cities have now been going on for two weeks. On November 7, Prime
Minister Dominique de Villepin announced the government’s response. It was to resuscitate
a 1955 law authorizing the proclamation of a state of emergency.

This law not only authorizes
prefects (non-elected, government-appointed administrators of France’s départements—the equivalent of
counties) to impose curfews in areas where they deem it necessary. It can also
be used to ban meetings and demonstrations, control the press, place banning
orders on people going to certain places, search houses at night, and even put
people under house arrest.

The utilization of the 1955 law is
highly symbolic. It was originally adopted during the Algerian War of
Independence to combat the independence fighters and the population that
supported them. Fifty years later it is being used against young people, many
of whom are the grandchildren of those same Algerians. Because the areas where
the riots have taken place are not just poor and neglected. They are also home
to large concentrations of North Africans and Black Africans.

The vast majority
of these young people were born in France and therefore have French
citizenship. But they are very conscious of not being French citizens like
anyone else. Young people of Arab and African origin are second-class citizens.
Even when they succeed in leaving school with qualifications, or even go to
university, their chances of finding a job are much less than their white
counterparts. And they are subjected to constant racist harassment—police controls, de facto color bars at the entrances to night
clubs, etc.

The use of the 1995 law amounts to
a recognition that the only thing the government has to offer these young
people is repression. Periodic attempts to “rehabilitate” their neighborhoods
have had little effect. A generation of young people has grown up in grim,
increasingly ghetto-like housing “estates” [projects], with little hope of
escape, feeling rejected by a society whose loudly proclaimed
commitment to equality does not seem to apply to them.

The significance of the state of
emergency has not been lost on these young people.

Recalling the aim of the original
law fifty years ago, Djamel, a 30-year old inhabitant of the Paris suburb of
Aubervilliers, put it succinctly to a journalist from the daily Le Monde: “In this country a bougnoule (racist term for North
Africans) always remains a bougnoule.
Seriously. You see, it’s proof
that they don’t consider us to be really French”. His friend Omar added:
“People are going to go crazy. We’re already confined to our ‘estates’ [i.e.,
the run-down projects called home]; now they’re passing laws to lock us up in
our homes.”

People—young people—have already
“gone crazy.” In many ways, what is surprising is not that the suburbs have
exploded but that they did not explode before. The riots were sparked off by
the deaths of two teenagers in the Paris
suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, who were accidentally electrocuted as they took
refuge from police. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. But it was
far from an isolated incident. Young people—mostly of Arab and African origin—regularly
die from the brutal methods of the police. Usually the result is a local riot
or protest march, and then things die down again, until the next time. This
time the pent-up anger exploded, and the revolt spread to other Parisian
suburbs and then across France.
The scale of the revolt is indicated by the more than 30 zones where the state of
emergency has been invoked. They cover areas in and around France’s main towns and cities, from the English
Channel to the Mediterranean.

The term “riot” which has come to
be applied to the revolt is in fact misleading. The revolt is the work of gangs
of youth who know each other and who consciously turn their anger into acts of
destruction of property—burning cars, schools, shops, buses—and attacks on the
hated police. As one young man put it to the Madrid daily El País: “We don’t have words to explain
what we feel. We only know how to speak with fire.”

Beyond immediate targets, their
anger is directed against Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the hard-right
hopeful for the 2007 presidential election, who has described them as “scum,”
“rabble,” and “gangrene” and has threatened to “hose down” their neighborhoods.
The only political demand that the rebel youth have so far put forward is for
Sarkozy’s resignation.

Of course, there is a negative side
to this revolt. It is easy enough to see that when the youth wreak havoc in
their own neighborhoods it causes damage to their neighbors and families. This
can and is being exploited by the government to create divisions between
generations in the Arab and Black African communities and between those
communities and “ordinary” French people. But when the despair of those to whom
society offers no future explodes in revolt, it rarely does so in a neat, tidy
and “politically correct” way. What is happening in France
today recalls the explosions in the ghettoes of North America in the 1960s and
the 1981 riots in England.

The youth revolt has been at the
center of French political life for two weeks. The right-wing government has alternated
between Sarkozy’s provocative statements and mealy-mouthed assurances of the
government’s concern and understanding. But the bottom line was to send in more
and more police, thus exacerbating the situation, and finally to resort to the
1955 law.

Well over a thousand young people
have already been arrested. In this climate the far right has been having a
field day. National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen has called on “rioters” to
be stripped of their French citizenship. Philippe de Villiers, leader of the
rival Movement for France,
has said that the government “has not taken the measure of the anti-French insurrection,
which is threatening the unity of the republic.” Both the ultra right and the
right wing of the ruling UMP party have called for the army to be sent in to
the suburbs.

The main opposition party, the
Socialist Party, has not rejected the use of the 1955 law, confining itself to
saying that it was necessary to be “vigilant’ in applying it, but that “above
all, it is imperative to reestablish order and security.”

Forces to the left of the SP have
reacted differently, placing the blame for the riots on decades of neglect,
institutionalized racism, and police brutality. The LCR, French section of the
Fourth International, has called from the beginning for the resignation of
Sarkozy. This demand has also been taken up by the Communist Party leadership,
which has, however, had to contend with pressure from within the party, mainly
from the municipalities it controls in the suburbs, to put equal blame on the
police and the “rioters.”

A joint statement opposing the
state of emergency was issued on November 8, signed by political parties (the
LCR, the CP, the Greens, and the Citizens’ Alternative), trade unions, and
civil rights organizations. Discussions are taking place with a view to organizing
united initiatives, including demonstrations in defiance of the curfew in the
areas where it has been imposed. A first rally took place on November 9 in
Bobigny, administrative centre of the Seine Saint-Denis département, in the northeast of Paris, the area where the revolt began. It
was supported by the LCR, the CP, and the main trade unions of the département. But over and above such initiatives,
when the dust has settled, the French left will have to develop an ongoing
presence in the neighborhoods where the revolt exploded, and from which it has
been all too absent in recent years.